PJ Harvey Scores Broadway Play, Wants to Do Comedy

They say the neon lights are bright on Broadway

Broadway's been in a whole lot of financial trouble lately. Apparently, with a recession on, nobody wants to pay triple-digits to watch Brian McKnight in Chicago, which is ridiculous. But there's a new bright, shining star in town, and she just might save Broadway. Or at least bum it out completely.

PJ Harvey might not exactly be Gilbert and Sullivan, but she's still about to make an impact on Broadway, as the New York Daily News reports (via The Playlist). Harvey wrote the score for a new production of Hedda Gabler, Henrik Ibsen's ridiculously depressing 1890 repressed-rage romp. "I've wanted to do theater or film music since I first began writing music," she tells the Daily News' Jim Farber. "I've just never been approached before."

According to Farber's report, Harvey's score is based on a hissing noise that Harvey made by playing guitar feedback at the wrong speed. There's also some piano in there, but Harvey says she took that piano and "under-cut that with something wrong in the lower end, something destabilizing. It sounds like radio static, or like things breaking down." Why didn't Andrew Lloyd Webber think of that?

Director Ian Rickson's production of Hedda Gabler opened yesterday at the American Airlines Theater, and runs through March 29. Weeds star Mary-Louise Parker plays the title character.

In the Daily News interview, Harvey revealed that she's been doing a lot of painting, sculpting, and writing poetry, and has worked up enough artwork for her own exhibit. She also dropped this bomb: "I'd like to do some comedy work. "I'd love to do a show with a standup comic and music." What!

Meanwhile, Harvey and longtime collaborator John Parish will release A Woman a Man Walked By, their second equal-billing album, on March 30 via Island Records. Harvey will also tour behind it.